If you do not utilize CodeIgniter’s template
engine, you’ll be using pure PHP in your
View files. To minimize the PHP code in these files, and to make it
easier to identify the code blocks it is recommended that you use PHPs
alternative syntax for control structures and short tag echo statements.
If you are not familiar with this syntax, it allows you to eliminate the
braces from your code, and eliminate “echo” statements.

If you find that the syntax described in this page does not
work on your server it might be that “short tags” are disabled in your
PHP ini file. CodeIgniter will optionally rewrite short tags on-the-fly,
allowing you to use that syntax even if your server doesn’t support it.
This feature can be enabled in your config/config.php file.

Please note that if you do use this feature, if PHP errors are
encountered in your view files, the error message and line number
will not be accurately shown. Instead, all errors will be shown as
eval() errors.